cutting and carrying dahlias on airplane

tika1August 27, 2007

Has anyone ever successfully cut dahlias from their own garden, wrapped them in paper and carried them on a plane? My flight is about 3 hours long. I plan to wrap 20 stems in damp paper towels, lay flowers in a box and hold them on my lap, getting them into water at the airport. Any suggestions would be appreciated.

I'd put the stems down into something really deep like a sports bottle so they can actually draw up water. You could carry them in a shopping bag with handles so they stay upright. Or you know what would work is the little plastic test tubes with the perforated rubber tops that florists use for long stemmed roses. You push each stem down into the self contained tube and the water doesn't leak. Then you could pack a box where the blossoms won't get jostled. Somebody is going to get a nice present!

Well, a few years back, my wife and I had a sucessful experience transporting dahlias from Denver to Minneapolis for a Nationl Show.

What we did was to get some balloons, fill them with a little conditioned water, pull them over ends of the stems and wrap them with rubber bands as insurance against leaking. On the stems that were too large for standard balloons, we solved the problem by getting a package of condoms and using them just like the ballons.

As an additional challenge our 7:00am flight was canceled, and we spent about nine hours in the Denver terminal with two boxes of dahlias following us everywhere we went.

When we arrived at our hotel in Minneapolis at about 8:00pm, the dahlias looked great and won their fair share of awards the next day.

I wonder if the new restrictions on carrying on water would make this difficult. Maybe the balloon trick? Probably should call the airlines and check. I would sure like to take a bouquet of my dahlias to my daughter in Maine in a couple of weeks!